The other day I was buying a pack of peanut M&Ms when my friend stopped me, saying "make sure you don't get salmonella!" Despite the fact that the plants with the infected peanuts have been shut down, the hysteria continues on. According to the Plainview Daily Herald, the outbreak has caused more than 600 illnesses, and 9 deaths.
This made me think of Romanticizing, the topic we've been learning about in American Studies class. It is when something is made into a bigger deal than it is, the example we talked about was our new President Obama, and how some media falsely portrays him as the answer to all the world's problems. I found the salmonella to be quite a different case. Instead of being romanticized, or made into a big deal, there was almost no coverage in the beginning. I remember seeing a tiny headline in the Chicago Tribune last week about peanut butter being recalled, and it was barely even big enough to be an article.
It made me start to think, what if its underRomanticization led to the mass hysteria now? If the weight of the issue was announced right away, perhaps it would have gained the public's trust, therefore preventing the fear now. Of course this isn't the same situation as most of the examples of Romanticization, but the same principles still apply. It didn't need to be overstated, but if the outbreak was made into a little bit bigger of a deal, we could avoid the problems now, which will probobly continue for a while.
1 comment:
Great post Lena!
It is very true that this prevalent issue should have more coverage in the media. A few weeks ago my mom was still buying peanut butter products because she was unaware of the salmonella issue. I think that instead of over romanticizing various products and people in the media, the news should focus more on issues such as these in order to protect the lives of citizens in the world. If the newspaper allowed this issue to be a cover story, then, like you said, far less people probably would have died from it. In the future, I hope the media will see this as a more important issue than other topics such as the super bowl, which was given a cover story on many newspapers, and a lot of air time on TV.
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